traditional in his family. The favour of the marquise de Maintenon secured him the post of governor of Guyenne from November 1670 to 1676. In 1675 he conducted a veritable campaign, pursued with energy, against the public uprising at Bordeaux over taxes on timber and tobacco, and successfully demolished the Porte Sainte Croix and 500 toises of the city ramparts. Saint-Simon's incisive word portraits of the duc d'Albret were uncompromising: "He was a man of spirit, competent, proud, and even more, of intrigue. "He was a man who, without having served much and never in charge, made a good account of himself by his spirit, his courage, his address and his magnificence. He kept great state everywhere and had with him at Pons the best company". In Pons, he received the title "Sire de Pons" and is also known for his design of the monumental Grand Staircase, which would later connect the upper city to the lower city near the Keep of Pons, and was designed in the year 1665. His exploits in gallantry are more considerable than his military ones. The list of his conquests is a long one: Marion Delorme, Ninon de Lenclos, with whom he fathered a son, Marguerite de Béthune-Sully, Madame d'Olone. He frequented the salon of Françoise d'Aubigné the future Madame de Maintenon, who said "Marshal d'Albret has always been my friend, I don't know he ever was my lover". Widowed by Paul Scarron she took refuge at the hôtel d'Albret, where she met Mme de Montespan, cousin by marriage of the maréchal as well as Bonne d'Heudicourt (his cousin of the Pons family, thanks to whom Mme de Montespan entrusted to her the education of the children she had with Louis XIV, who took a fancy to the widowed governess. Notes 1614 births 1676 deaths French people of the Eighty Years' War Cesar Phoebus Marshals of France